Subway-Push Prevention Solution Would Be Very Costly for the MTA

By

Ted Mann

Updated Dec. 31, 2012 10:01 a.m. ET

After a passenger was shoved under the wheels of a subway train for the second time in a month on Thursday, the head of the agency that runs the transit system offered sympathy and renewed warnings to stand back from station platform edges.

But Joseph Lhota, outgoing chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said there are no easy answers to the problem of trains striking and killing subway riders.

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Mr. Lhota said Friday that one of the most frequently suggested solutions—platform-mounted doors that would open only when a train was in the station—would be practical only if cost were no object. "If we lived in a world of completely unlimited available dollars, yeah, there may be a way to do it," he said. "I don't think that this is something that can be solved by spending more money in the subway system."

Mr. Lhota's response reflects an uncomfortable reality of running a transit system serving 8.5 million riders a day: Customers get hit by trains almost three days a week, and there are few easy preventive measures.

Through Dec. 27, a preliminary tally showed 139 people "made contact with a moving train" in 2012, either on the platform or in the tracks. Fifty-four of those people died. The total number of people hit was likely to come in slightly below 2011's total, when 147 were hit, and above 2010's, when 128 people were struck.

Speaking of Thursday's incident, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Friday: "We do live in a world where our subway platforms are open and that's not going to change."

In fact, MTA officials have mulled installing platform doors as recently as this year, but ultimately shied away over issues of cost and practicality.

In March, Thomas Prendergast, the MTA's transit division president, noted that the barriers—which open and close in concert with train doors, much like the outer doors of an elevator—had been installed in other transit systems that included older facilities, like those in London and Paris. Platform doors can also allow for air-conditioning of train platforms and prevent litter from getting onto the tracks.

Another benefit: The doors can improve the efficiency of trains because they make it more difficult for passengers to hold open train doors.

"It's something we do need to take a look at, especially for high-volume stations," Mr. Prendergast said at the time. The agency quickly backed away from the concept this spring, however, and now considers the doors impractical. The reason is both cost and practicality, MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg said.

The MTA focuses its effort on urging customers to stand back from platform edges and to report suspicious behavior to police.

There is a precedent for such public-awareness campaigns working, Mr. Prendergast said in March. He said when he first joined the MTA in 1982, the agency mounted an aggressive campaign to try to stop people from crossing between cars while trains were in motion, because of the number of riders who slipped and fell beneath the wheels.

The warnings led to a "marked decrease" in such accidents, he said. "Some people didn't actually realize how dangerous it was."

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